to avoid the fiscal cliff. now a number of democrats have been pushing back saying we have not been excluded. nancy pelosi says she has spoken to the president. there are also a number of republicans saying that they are involved. michael steele, who was a spokesman for the speaker said, if we are going to solve this problem, the white house and speaker have important roles. the bottom line is that it's probably the president and speaker doing the heavy lifting on this but we will see what speaker boehner has to say. we'll have that for you live at the top of the hour. >>> in the meantime, amazing new video from nasa. you may have already seen these incredible pictures. look at this. this is the earth at night illuminated by city lights across the planet. but there's this new report about whether nasa can maintain its leadership role in space exploration. let me bring informer space shuttle engineer, james oberg. it's been a while. thank you, james. >> hello, chris. >> the council is saying that nasa is at a cr